Poker variance
When you play poker there’s no way to avoid something called variance. This basically means that even if you play your best game and do everything correct there will be times when you still lose a poker hand and your hard earned money with it.
Variance is a part of the game which we all experience and as skilled poker players must accept even though it hurts.
To give an example let’s say you have AA and your opponent has KK, you go all in before the flop and you’re feeling very good about it. Then the flop comes: 2h Qd Tc, and it looks good. Turn card is 3h and now it’s looking very promising for you with just the river card left to come. The river card is a king! This is now giving your opponent three of a kind with kings vs your single pair of aces. So now even though you initially had a better hand and statistically should have won, you still lose the hand.
Dealing with poker variance
I know how much this sucks and I can feel your pain but this is something that will happen a lot when you’re playing this game. If you can’t handle it then I must say it’s better to play something else because no matter what, variance will happen a lot when you play poker.
But the good news is that in the long run, if you run this scenario over and over you will win in the long run, and that’s what you need to keep in mind when this happens, because it will happen to you a lot.
You need to be able to control your emotions and have tilt control. If you can’t handle it then I would suggest you take a break and do something completely different. Then once you have calmed down just try and focus on playing your best game and try to forget what has happened before.
Once you have learned to master variance by keeping your emotions in-check, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a good player, and knowing that even with losses through variance, in the long run you will be profitable.
What is long term?
When you play poker you will often hear someone mention “in the long term” or “in the long run”. The opposite of long term is short term, this means that you should focus on your long term results. What I mean by long term is when you have played several thousands of hands. I would consider having played at least over 100 000 hands to start looking over the long run. Don’t just focus on this one recently played hand where you had AA vs KK and your opponent won. If you look over the same situation fore over 100 000 hands you should see that your AA is winning most of the time.
How do you know if you have played over 100 000 hands you might ask? Well you need to have some sort of poker tracking software to keep track of every hand played along with seeing a graph of how you’re performing over the long run.
In this instance I’ve used PokerTracker 4 for over 10 years and can highly recommend it. Not only does it save all your hand histories, the software also comes with an HUD and a whole host of other useful features.
When you have over 100 000 hand histories saved, you can determine visually whether you’re a winning or losing player by looking at the graphs. If you’re winning money and the graph is generally going in an upwards direction then congratulations, you’re beating the micro stakes and should continue what you’re doing. As your bank grows you can then look to increase your table limits and go from there.
Poker variance reversed
An additional point to make about poker variance, there will be times when it works in your favor and you end up winning with KK when your opponent has AA. You’ll obviously feel lucky when this happens because theoretically you shouldn’t have won the hand. Just keep in mind that this is still variance as the statistically correct outcome didn’t happen so you should still keep your emotions in-check. Winning too much through variance can be just as dangerous as losing because you can end up being too over confident.
I wish you all the best on the tables and remember to take a deep breath and remember that variance will happen and it’s important to think of the long run!
If you want to read more or my poker articles you can find them here
